Dialogflow: Respond based on values and other conditional responses

Question

I have $dinetype variable obtained from the user.

But I would like to give response based on what value has been set in $dinetype variable. In addition to giving responses, I also need to set relevant context. How do I do this in DialogFlow?

if($Dinetype=='dineout') 
      ask ('which restaurant would you like to go to?')
      set_context ('awaiting-restaurant')
if($Dinetype=='takeaway') 
      ask ('When would you like to take away?')
      set_context ('awaiting-takeaway-time')

Is it programmable at all? Or is it possible to achieve something equivalent to the above in the UI?

Answer 1

You can't do this in the Response section directly. The Response section is meant for fairly simple responses that don't require significant logic to process. Although you can use parameters in the response, you can't give a different response based on the value of the parameter. So you can set a response to something like

I think $Dinetype is great food.

but not

{{#if $Dinetype == "Thai"}}I think Thai food is too hot{{/if}}

or anything like that

However, you can add code that sends conditional responses and contexts by implementing a Fulfillment webhook. Although you can't do this for each Intent as part of the Intent editor screen, the Fulfillment screen includes a built-in code editor.

Answer 2

Late reply, but maybe someone will find this useful.

If the conditional response only needs to reference a single parameter value, then I figured out what you can do is utilize the Entity's "Reference Value" as the response you want to give for a particular set of Synonyms.

So you'd have an entity that looked like this:

Then, setup your intent like this, with a response of $Dinetype:

Then the end result will look like this:

And you can make whatever follow-up intent you need from there.

Down-side is Dinetype won't be as reusable. But I still think it beats writing a fulfillment webhook every time you need a simple conditional response.